[ale] home backup system

[Vincent Fox]

> I am wondering if anyone has a backup solution they are happy with...I 
> am wanting to setup some sort of backup system/procedure for the systems 
> on my home lan...I have been leaning towards putting a dvd burner in one 
> box and letting the others send their backup data there every other day 
> and burn it to a dvd once or twice a week ...any thoughts? suggestions 
> on clients/servers....

Any sort of staged solution like that should work fine.

Methods:
For Linux I have used rsync with good results. Run Samba on the
server and then you can script smbclient and pull the files from
certain directories on the Windows boxes instead of always relying
on them remembering to dump files into the right share.
You need to decide if you want push or pull or
some combination of the two.

Hardware:
CD-RW, DVD-R(whatever), all work fine. Personally I'm
skeptical that there is much difference in the failure
rates of spinning optical drives versus spinning sealed
hard drives. I've had both go bad. Nothing more annoying
than THINKING you have a backup until you try to read it.
A hard drive on a USB2 or firewire connection can be just as
portable, a lot faster doing the backup and recovery stuff,
and it's a lot cheaper per gig.